The fire alarm went off in my friend's apartment today (everyone was fine), and she ended up carrying her cat out on her shoulder because she couldn't find the cat carrier. I am sitting here looking at my buddies and thinking how hard it would be to get all four of them outside and confined in a timely manner. Is it crazy to keep cat carriers and leashes stacked by the door? Do you have an emergency plan for kids/pets/photos?

_________________my roommate spilled tuna juice on the bathroom floor while he was eating on the toilet! should i bleach the floor or just tear up the tile? - acrVegan Coloradical

I have a sort of plan/supplies, but it needs a little modification. I have two backpacks next to my bed, one with supplies and one with food/water for me and my cat. The heavier one, food/water, rolls. Lady M's roomy hard carrier is two feet from this in the closet, and copies of her paperwork and mine are in a waterproof closed folder in my supplies backpack. I have a mini-kit for me in my car (water, food, first aid kits, flashlight). I need to get litter, a portable litter tray, and clothing/shoes for me into the backpack with everything else, replace my contacts, put a blanket in the car, and update my and Lady M's medicine supply. I have utensils but no travel plate/bowl and I can't remember if I have a food dish for Lady M. I should update my paperwork and put cash in the backpack, but I'm poor. I also need to label the outside of Lady M's crate with my contact details in permanent marker and put her records with the crate instead of mixed with mine. I do have a harness/leash for her and a waterproof id for her harness or collar (I have both) as well as Feliway to keep her calm if we are gone for an extended period. My system is geared more towards dealing with a bad earthquake because we are due for a 500 year earthquake here.

I am not at all prepared. My mom, sister and I have a meeting place in case anything catastrophic happens city-wide/area-wide and we can't get in touch with each other. But I don't have any plans or supplies to get me and the animals out of the house and/or keep us in good shape. Amos's leash is in the coat closet by the door... and that's about it. There's no reason why I can't put together some kind of pack with food and supplies and just keep it in the downstairs bedroom since that's adjacent to all the exits. Good ideas in celyn's post.

I haven't done anything like this, but now that I read celyn's zombie apocalypse readiness post, I feel motivated! I don't have any animals, but I have a toddler and I really should get my shiitake together about having clothes/papers/etc ready to go if we have a fire or earthquake.

I've never thought about it, and being the huuuuuuge fan of zombies I am, I should totally have a plan in place! But seriously, I'm going to work on this tomorrow, because I love my kitties and want to be able to take care of them if anything happens. Thanks for posting this!

I haven't done anything like this, but now that I read celyn's zombie apocalypse readiness post, I feel motivated! I don't have any animals, but I have a toddler and I really should get my shiitake together about having clothes/papers/etc ready to go if we have a fire or earthquake.

Oh Lard. I hope I don't sound like a freak. I just read up on what I should have ready and have put it together over a number of years. I figure if I never use it, that's a great thing.

I haven't done anything like this, but now that I read celyn's zombie apocalypse readiness post, I feel motivated! I don't have any animals, but I have a toddler and I really should get my shiitake together about having clothes/papers/etc ready to go if we have a fire or earthquake.

Oh Lard. I hope I don't sound like a freak. I just read up on what I should have ready and have put it together over a number of years. I figure if I never use it, that's a great thing.

Not at all! You sound like a very responsible and prepared adult. I just think that you are also most likely to survive when the horde takes over.

Reading celyn's post makes me feel so underprepared! I have my dogs' health records in the filing cabinet, so I know where those are, but it would be a mad scramble to find and pack everything like food, medication, and supplies if we actually had to leave in a hurry. I'm surprised my husband doesn't have an emergency plan considering he actually talks about zombie attacks all the time.

I have evrything ready to evacuate the country in a matter of hours/days (in case the North attacks). Orion is chipped, has a passport, has valid EU quarantine paperwork and is trained with his IATA compliant crate.

I don't have a plan to evacuate the house in a matter of hours. Actually, even if I were on my own I'd feel unprepared. As a foreigner I have a poor support system. We saw during the Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear incident that embassies won't actually help their citizens in case of large catastrophy.

At the hospital I've been having my clinical affiliation at, we just had a 2 hour stint of disaster preparedness, followed by distribution of FEMA pamphlets for home preparedness which seem crazy paranoid. Emphasis on terrorist attacks, and the advice read like a B-movie. (I think forest fire would be the most likely reason to have to evacuate quickly around here). After I read it, I wondered if I am just naive, or FEMA really knows something I don't know. BTW, this is North Idaho where we have our share of real militia's and conspiracy theorists to add to the mix.

I am nowhere near the organization I suppose I could be. We are avid backpackers who keep a very full pantry, so we could come up with disaster preparedness kits somewhat quickly, but nothing is set aside and ready to grab should that level of super-fast evacuation ever be needed. Plus, we don't really store water here, which is pretty necessary. No paperwork, no photos, & no cat carriers by the door. With two cats and two dogs, (but no kids) I think we'd throw two dog carriers in the truck and put a litter box with the cats in one of them. If we had to hike out, I don't know how we'd bring the cats. Since I live in town, that is probably an unlikely scenario, but still gives me pause for thought.

We actually play "Team Zombie Apocalypse" sometimes when we're in the backcountry to pass the time...as in, who would you pick for your Apocalypse team members to help you survive if you had to escape to the wilderness. Hey- it passes the time. Or maybe I've really just been in North Idaho too damn long.

_________________I once caught the clap from a salty navy bean on shore leave. Damn beans.--Desdemona

I am totally not prepared. If we have an earthquake that matters I am screwed. One day I will get it together and get an emergency plan in place. The one thing that is good is where we live in protected by mountains, so I don't have to worry about tsunami like I did when we were in SF. If a tsunami reaches our house, we are probably already dead from the earthquake.

At least you guys who feel unprepared have some sort of an excuse. I took TWO college classes in which having a disaster plan was a big part of several of the assignments. Granted the instructor was prepared for a friggin' electromagnetic pulse and was stocked up on .22 shells to use as currency. Because you cannot eat or shoot with gold. He also had a tank. Seriously.

Anyway, I feel pretty stupid for not having a kit in place because of all that.

We have leashes by the door and dog crates by the door. In worse case, I guess we grab the cats and throw them in the crates. One problem is one of the cats is a hider. She'll run to basement if she is scared. There are cat carriers in the basement and a door.

The closest I came last year was a tornado warning. The cats both went to the basement and I took the dogs.

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

The lady we used to share our house with had this intense emergency organization she spearheaded, called the Pod. She actually had weekly pod meeting with all the people on our block to discuss various disasters and how they would cope. She was kind of hurt that we opted out of the meetings. Every time it snowed, there was a power outage, a minor earthquake, or heavy winds, she would be screaming on the phone to people about how bad it was going to be. We always joke whenever the wind picks up to "ACTIVATE THE POD."

Anyway, I'm not making fun of being prepared...obviously stuff does happen and it is better to have a plan than not. My boyfriend has a couple of crazy swords that he says will protect us "when the orcs come."

All joking aside, keeping my animals safe (which I don't have any of right now...sniff) would take priority.

when I was growing up in Florida, we were always prepped to evacuate in hurricane season. Bottled water, flashlights, canned food ready to go, cars never allowed to get below 3/4 tank of gas. Hurricanes are different though because you normally have at least a few days of notice. One summer, my mom actually got so annoyed with packing things up every few weeks when a hurricane was headed our way, she kept left all the important documents and photo albums in their giant tupperware storage containers for the season.

eta: despite having notice of a hurricane, there is nothing like that feeling of "will our house still be here when we come back"

I don't really have a plan for myself now, other than heading to the basement for tornado watches, and having candles with lighters easily accessible if the power goes out. Luckily we don't really get earthquakes in Chicago, despite there actually being a huge fault line that could affect us.

Whoa, celyn, so impressed! I just realized that we keep all our camping gear in two giant tubs that we can never be bothered to take back down to the basement, so we are totally ready for a camping emergency. But we don't even have a fire extinguisher. Damn it.

_________________my roommate spilled tuna juice on the bathroom floor while he was eating on the toilet! should i bleach the floor or just tear up the tile? - acrVegan Coloradical

The fire alarm went off in our building in the middle of the night last year. It made me realize that we need a plan in place (not that we've done it). I realized this after I had a 17 lb cat in my arms, no carrier, and he was peeing everywhere from being so scared. We were standing out on the front lawn like that when I realized Trevor (and Tristan the cat) where nowhere to be found. So I went BACK IN the apartment building only to find Trevor covered in scratches and freaking out because he couldn't catch a very scared Tristan. So I let go of Gershwin and decided we'd all just stand out on the balcony and scream for help if need be. Ugh. Worst night ever.

_________________Did you notice the slight feeling of panic at the words "Chicken Basin Street"? Like someone was walking over your grave? Try not to remember. We must never remember. - mumblesIs this about devilberries and nazifruit again? - footface

We have a pile of cat carriers on a table under the basement stairs, but it would be a chore to round up all of the cats since they have three floors worth of stuff to hide under. If the house caught on fire, I would shoo the dogs into the back yard, and then the fence between us and one of our neighbors yards is just chicken wire so we could lift them over and then leash them there.

I also have a multitool and a thing that will let me pee standing up in my purse, but that's about it.

_________________"The Tree is His Penis"

The tree is his penis // it's very exciting // when held up to his mouth // the lights are all lighting // his eyes start a-bulging // in unbridled glee // the tree is his penis // its beauty, effulgent -amandabear

I have an article tacked up next to my computer about putting together an emergency plan and kit. It's been sitting there for a year or so. Our next-door neighbor's house burned down last summer and I've been meaning to update our home inventory ever and get a emergency kit together since then. Man, I should get on that.

Anyone do online back-up in case your external hard drives are destroyed in a disaster?

My apartment did catch fire something like two years ago and the first thing I did was grab my cat, put her in her carrier and take her outside. I now have two cats and only one carrier and I have thought several times about how I need to get two in case of emergency, but I haven't done it yet. (If you keep up with posts in The Yard you might be aware that I have more urgent cat issues to attend to.) But maybe I should go buy one today.

_________________"No one with hair so soft and glossy could ever be bad at anything." - Tofulish